24Feb16

Swedish Aid Group Seeks Inquiry Into Afghan Hospital Raid

A Swedish aid group has demanded an independent investigation of a raid on
a hospital in Afghanistan last week in which it said that three people, including
a boy, were summarily executed by Afghan forces who were accompanied by
NATO troops.

Jorgen Holmstrom, country director of the charity, the Swedish Committee for
Afghanistan, on Wednesday called for the United States-led NATO military
command and the Afghan government to provide "a detailed explanation of
the incident." The raid began late on Feb. 17 at a hospital funded by the
Swedish committee in troubled Wardak Province, southwest of Kabul.

The raid, in which hospital staff members were "arrested and beaten," Mr.
Holmstrom said in a statement, was "a gross violation of humanitarian
principles and the Geneva Convention, which states that all parties to a
conflict must respect medical facilities."

The 10-bed hospital is in the Daimirdad district of Wardak, an area under
Taliban control, and provides essentially all of the formal health care for the
province. Just before midnight, Afghan police officers and foreign troops
arrived by helicopter, according to Dr. Wahidullah, who is head of the facility
and goes by only one name. The men began kicking in doors and searching
the rooms, he said, and held handcuffed hospital workers at gunpoint.

"They were yelling at us that 'You are serving the Taliban!' " Dr. Wahidullah
said. "I replied that this is a hospital. We provide services and medical
assistance to everyone, ordinary citizens and pro-Taliban or government
members alike."

The men then took two wounded patients and a young male visitor, he said.
They handcuffed them and took them to a local shop, he said, "where they
killed all three with bayonets and guns."

The government troops — including one woman — who entered the hospital
spoke Pashto and Dari, the two main languages of Afghanistan, he said, but
the men around the helicopter spoke English.

Officials with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or Unama,
on Tuesday criticized the raid, and reminded Afghan officials and their NATO
allies that military operations against medical facilities are against
international humanitarian law.

The Swedish Committee said the foreign troops did not appear to have
actually participated in the raid but rather waited nearby.

It was the second time in less than a year that the United States military
mission in Afghanistan has been called to account by a human rights
organization. In October, an American airstrike in the northern city of Kunduz
destroyed a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, killing dozens of people
in what aid officials called a war crime.

American Special Operations forces regularly accompany their Afghan
counterparts as part of the United States' "train, advise and assist" mission,
particularly on nighttime helicopter-borne operations where the Afghans lack
expertise. But there was no official confirmation by the American command on
the identity of the foreign troops who accompanied the raid.

"We are aware of the Unama report, and the Afghans are conducting an
investigation," Col. Michael T. Lawhorn, a spokesman for NATO's Resolute
Support mission and for United States Forces Afghanistan, said in a
statement. "In addition, we are conducting a preliminary inquiry to determine
whether there are any credible allegations of civilian casualties. It is Resolute
Support policy not to discuss ongoing investigations."

The Afghan Interior Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

In an interview with The New York Times last week a local police official
described the people killed in the Wardak raid as "terrorists," but no further
explanation or identification has been forthcoming. The Taliban have said
patients under treatment were "martyred" but have not said who they were.

[Source: By David Jolly, The New York Times, Kabul, 24Feb16]

This document has been published on 07Mar16 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with
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